Poultry Whisperer

While Dylan's heart has landed squarely on raising heifers for fair projects, Grady has bounced around between species like a coyote in a petting zoo.

First, he tried cattle -- it seemed obvious because we have a never ending supply of bottle calves, and, while they were never much of a problem for him, it just wasn't the right fit.  Goats! I thought, They're smaller than steers and easier to manage.  I was only 50% right.  It is true that goats are smaller than steers, but, as we learned with Snowball, they are far less manageable than cattle.  Dwarf goats! I thought, They're smaller than real goats and easier to manage.  Again, 50% right.  All goats are unmanageable, regardless of size, and they tend to jump on the hoods of cars, eat vegetable gardens down to the dirt, and prefer to poop, well, just everywhere.  They're funny, sure, but at the same time, they're belligerent.  I call them "asshole dogs."

The whole time, the answer to Grady's fair-quandary lay right in front of us.  Literally.  He's always been our go-to guy on all things chickens.  I can spend an hour trying to herd them back into their coop.  I look like Rocky Balboa in his "catch the chicken" training scene.  Grady casually walks over and scoops them up, one by one, until they're all put away.  Sometimes we catch him just sitting in the coop, hanging with his homegirls.

While chickens are fun to raise, we thought we'd up the poultry ante and go with turkeys.  Turks are amazing -- they grow exponentially, their heads change from blue to red to white like a mood ring, they have crazy body parts with names like snood and wattle, and you can trick them into gobbling simply by scaring them with your own sudden call.  It's a fun game.

Grady has two.  He hasn't named them because we're unsure if they're hens or toms (although one will definitely be named "Robot," we're just not sure which one).  And, just like their smaller chicken cousins, they're completely unafraid of Grady.  He pets them, walks them around, and keeps them well fed.

Grady's still too young to sell at the fair, so this year is just a turkey trial run, but we may have found his niche.  Find him at the fair and he'll show you two of the oddest animals you've ever seen.  He definitely is the boy who talks to turkeys.

AR, a million

She can shoot

This post's title might be the name of a hot new Bon Iver single (hipsters chuckle), or the newest knockoff assault rifle out of China (hipsters scowl), but in fact, it's neither.  Actually, it's an excuse for me to brag about my daughter a little.  The AR stands for Accelerated Reader.  I imagine if your kid goes to public school, you're familiar.  The "Million" part is the number of pints Dylan racked up this year.  Of course, I'm being hyperbolic, but judging from the amount of time she has her nose in a book, I'm sure I'm not too far off.

She can quilt

Dylan is constantly reading --- in the car, on the way to school, on the bus ride home -- sometimes I tell her to go outside and play and she brings a book.  She reads pretty much whatever she can get her hands on.  When she's out of books, she re-reads old ones.  It's interesting to watch, this little bookworm, plow through book after book after book.  I'm amazed she does anything else, really.  But, she still manages to care for a fair heifer, ride her horse, play with the dogs and kittens, shoot her bow, and, occasionally kick a soccer ball around.  But then it's always back to the books.

She can kitten

This year, I told her I'd give her $100 bill if she broke the school's AR point record.  I think I paid that out by March.  She asked for a Kuiu shirt if she reached the next 100 point increment, and 2 weeks later we were online, checking out youth shirts on their website.  I suspected she was going to keep reading regardless, so I quit offering payouts, and I was right.  As I'm writing this, there are 2 days of school left and she just told me she was going to take the tests for 5 more books tomorrow.  I haven't read 5 books in the past 2 years, and I was an English major.

Regina and I are both impressed and proud.  Someday her AR point record will probably be broken.  I joke that it'll probably be by some boy (or girl)-in-a-bubble, but I hope it's by another little jr. badass.  But that kid probably won't be decked out in camo, quietly bobbing his or her head to the falsetto tones of Bon Iver.